[quote=“Rayvolution,post:60,topic:50918”]
To quote Notch: “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.”
I guess I don’t understand people criticizing this move. He explained pretty well his reasons for selling his company, not that he owes anybody an explanation.
Why does this make you (and lots of other people) so angry, when it really doesn’t impact you at all?
Yeah you start making a game you think is fun and before you know it the whole internet and then some has opinions on how your core ethics are bullshit or something. Can’t blame him for making a choice that might bring him happiness instead of endless rivers of hate that flow towards the internet-famous.
“Reputation” is a life-long project.
I’m certainly not in a position to judge, never having experienced the amount of responsibility that comes with that much wealth or having creative control of a product with that much mind-share.
Another thought: this is more a conversion of state than anything else, from Kinetic to Potential energy.
It’s now $2.5 billion by the way! I’m in shock with this sale and apprehensive that Microsoft will ruin Minecraft, but then again, they paid $2.5 billion to get it, and more, back through sales, either directly or indirectly from unit sales. This means they will try their hardest not to fuck up!
In Microsoft’s case, that is no guarantee.
Kev
I do expect a Minecraft II Xbox-exclusive or something like that. And I could not care less, plenty of cubeworld games to choose from.
I never said I was upset, just stating facts.
I’m happy for the sale, I figure MS will bring in a more professional-minded development process. My only concern (like everyone else’s) is if they botch it. But I don’t think they will.
He built up his reputation on giving the finger to big business, it’s actually his fault people are reacting the way they are.
As I said, I’m happy for the sale. But it still doesn’t change the fact Notch sold out his core ethical foundation. There’s really no way you can claim he didn’t. Although I’m sure he hates the fact he is in such a spotlight people are pointing it out. Notch set himself up as a shining example of sticking it to the man, then sold out to the man. There’s many other ways he could of left the Mojang/Minecraft world.
Regardless, I’m not upset by any of this. I used strong words to make a point, and the point really can’t be argued… people can just be annoyed that I was so blunt about it. 
Notoriety isn’t a trip, it’s not something that you can take and leave once for all, he can return to a more peaceful life but he can’t rewrite the History, he can’t erase Minecraft. I’m impatient to see its Doom renderer based on WebGL/Dart even though he wrote some unpleasant comments about TUER (my game) several years ago.
What I have to thank Notch indirectly and the others here is for having fun creating some Java4K games.
Nice to squeeze some Ideas into ugly looking code lines.
I can also understand leaving a project behind tha became “unreal” in terms of popularity.
Not everyone wants to stand in the spotlight, beeing followed by paparazzis to the loo.
Hopefully in the long term he is getting over with it. He has enough money - even without the deal - to do whatever he likes to do.
Anyway, congratz on getting rid of some burden 
If he is really cool, he will buy a 1 cubic metre gold block.
I’m awaiting a big donation in order to get a dedicated server or cloud for java4k and domain fees for the next 2 millennias 
then he’ll buy Oracle and get Java back into the browser, invent a time machine and go back to 1999 minor things like that.
But in all seriousness, it’s sort of strange. What would you do with a billion dollars in your bank account? Go back making ludum dare games?
I never really played Minecraft, tried it out at first and thought my creativity was spent better elsewhere than hatching away in some 3D matrix.
It’s clear Markus has gotten very carried away and detached, he says he’s not a CEO, just a programmer, but withdrew Minecraft from making it available for VR because Facebook bought Oculus. Then he sells Minecraft to Microsoft. I’m pretty sure a few guys are scratching their heads.
But now he’s signed the dotted line, and he’ll be able to do whatever he wishes for the rest of his life. For the rest of us, keep on scrubbing
[quote=“Rayvolution,post:67,topic:50918”]
I guess I don’t really know the details, since I never knew Notch built up his reputation as being anti-business or something of that nature. In fact, the genius-level Minecraft merchandising had me believing that he, like the rest of us, had no problem monetizing his product. Maybe I don’t know enough about Notch to be commenting.
But even taking everything you said as true (despite it all being subjective and mostly from Notch’s perspective), I’m still not sure why this is bothering so many people. “Oh no some guy I don’t know is making money off of the product that he made and I enjoy, how terrible…” The amount of whining this is generating should at least make it pretty obvious to everybody why Notch is leaving in the first place, haha.
[quote=“KevinWorkman,post:73,topic:50918”]
There were not many ways for Markus to “get out”. 2 years ago a studio like Valve could have bought the game, but today Mojang could probably buy Valve. EA probably wouldn’t have enough money to spend on buying Minecraft.
In the end Minecraft got so big that only a handful of corporations had enough money to buy it, and only one or two actually had a business case reason for buying it. For Markus the only way out was to “sell out” to the likes of Microsoft.
If you can name one “good” company that could have bought Minecraft, had a business case reason and the money at hand, then please name it.
[quote=“KevinWorkman,post:73,topic:50918”]
Well, I think the reason it bothers so many is actually his past mindset on big business, and then suddenly he’s “in bed” with them according to the fans. If he wasn’t following the ethical standpoint of “big gaming industry is ruining gaming” I don’t think anyone would have cared that he sold the game. But I think because he has always had that standpoint, that’s what has a majority of the fans in an uproar.
For example, here a few factoids, there’s plenty more. But I guess these are the big two everyone references.
It’s odd that his stance against these companies would be so absolute, blunt, and strong, then he suddenly sells the company to one of them. That’s where my “sellout his ethics” comments really originated, because I can’t for the life of me figure out how the same person who could make the statements in the above articles, would sell his business to the same company unless those ethics he had in the past were just to drum-up support for the indie community and now that he doesn’t need them, he doesn’t care anymore and his true colors are showing.
Although, that’s just my opinion based on the information presented to me. The only conclusion I can come up with that’s logical. Because if he really, deep down believed in the philosophy hes touted for years there’s no way selling to Microsoft would be an option, for any amount of money.
Didn’t he apologize later for those messages? Maybe it wasn’t those specific ones, but he did for something similar.
People’s values can change. We also don’t even know a lot of the details in the transfer of ownership. They could have worked it out in a way that Notch felt would work well and go along with any vision Minecraft was supposed to be. We don’t know.
Being famous leads to pressure, only people who really look for attention can bear standing in the spotlight for a long time whereas the loss of privacy it causes is difficult to live for an healthy person. Notch is still healthy, it’s a good piece of news.
Yeah, this is what I suspect happened. None of us know the conditions of the sale, I suspect there may have been many clauses in there to protect the nature of Minecraft. For example, a “No microtransactions” clause or some such.
I would disagree with you, entirely, on your assertions. Selling this thing that became too big for him to manage, too volatile for his person, so he could go back and focus on what he loves without having to worry about paying another bill for the rest of his life, and never diluted Minecraft from its original inception? Sounds like his ethics are in tact.
People often confuse $$$ for selling out. It’s not the same thing in all cases.
[quote=“Rayvolution,post:67,topic:50918”]
Not his fault, make your own mind up. Perhaps it was sold to Microsoft because it is substantial enough that it requires a much larger corporation to protect the IP, maintain the variety of platforms, keep servers in line, etc.?
Again, congrats to him and the team. Well deserved.
[quote]It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.
[/quote]
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